


help me piece it all together, darling

by wild_and_free



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Ed saw Mustang's rat mustache and raised him a full-ass beard, Edwin if you squint really really hard like you're looking into the sun, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Humor, Immortality, Let Lan Fan Show Depth and Emotion 2019, LingFan Week 2019, Post-Canon, Romance, Slow Burn, Time Travel, bastille was On Repeat while i wrote this, it's truly criminal that there isn't a character tag for Fu, this got really Dramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 06:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19662070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wild_and_free/pseuds/wild_and_free
Summary: When she waits for him in the city that shines, it’s only been two months since he left her.Ling Yao jumps through time, and Lan Fan becomes something extraordinary to protect him.For Lingfan Week 2019 Day 1: Separation/Longing





	help me piece it all together, darling

_‘He’s late.’_ Lan Fan sticks her hands in her pockets and squints. The glare from sun spills off the reflective panels of a nearby dumpling shop, like light on water. _‘He said 7:23. Which was eight minutes ago.’_

“I know what he said.”

_‘Maybe he fainted? You should go look for him.’_

“He didn’t.” She sighs. “I’d still feel him.”

 _‘Unless he’s hiding from you.’_ Lan Fan tilts her head in acknowledgment. How like Ling it would be, to try and mask his _qi_ from her when she most needed to find him.

 _‘Don’t be stupid, Cass. Lan Fan’s been refining her abilities for centuries now. If he was on the other side of the planet, she’d sense him.’_ Davit’s voice is sharp in her mind. _‘Ling probably got the time off.’_

 _‘Switched it to the morning, more like.’_ Cass’ sigh is an echo. Lan Fan pictures her propping her chin in her hands. _‘He really ought to be more careful. It’s not easy, always having to wait for him.’_

Lan Fan leans against the wall, the silver surface cool against her back. “That’s enough. His Majesty will be here soon.” The souls in her head shift and murmur quietly, and the sun slides lower, dipping the clouds in amber and gold. As one, the silver tiles on the dumpling shop turn, their sparkling faces rotating out of sight. On the backs of the tiles, glass screens begin to brighten, displaying the shop’s chubby mascot dancing among the chefs in the kitchen.

The building behind her, too, exchanges its panels for screens that light white and blue and fuchsia into the backs of her eyes. Lan Fan turns away from the blinding wall and thinks how much Ling would love to see this: their city as bright as a star.

She doesn’t think about how it will shine on without him after he’s gone.

* * *

Becoming immortal was perhaps the one and only request her Emperor could ask of her that Lan Fan would not think of accepting.

It had been years since any of them had thought about the red vial they’d brought back from the lands in the West. The previous Emperor had taken it in increments, wary of ingesting the whole thing. Still, he was satisfied with stepping down, his mind so full of _eternal life_ that he didn’t care what Ling did with his country. Had he been more mindful, perhaps he would’ve known how his son gazed into the heart of the world and saw what could be.

Eventually, inevitably, Ling’s father stopped taking the Stone. He’d claimed headaches from voices in his head, and the constant feeling of being strained, skin stretched to the breaking point over his bones. When he died, he did so peacefully, with all the somber rites and traditions granted to him. During the funeral procession, Mei Chang had observed that he may have lived longer had he put more effort into befriending the souls in his body. Ling, just as ruthless, pointed out that his father had not been any Van Hohenheim. Lan Fan, with much more respect, told them both to be quiet. 

After that, the slow, steady wave of modernization picked up steam. Technology shifted and adapted, the country’s very hierarchy cracking at the seams. The Emperor had seen, after all, the marvelous, lethal power that industrialization had given the countries to the West, and he couldn’t ignore the opportunity to learn from Amestris’ mistakes. Trains, phones, cars, guns, Automail—Xing had to have them all, had to have them be _better_. Their friends across the desert were not the only ones with dangerous neighbors.

But Amestris healed quickly. A decade after Ling took the throne, there were rumors. Military scientists in the West had unearthed the secret to time travel. By some fortune, Edward Elric had decided to grace the capitol with his presence that month, and gracefully choked on his tongue laughing when he heard.

“Time travel? The closest thing to time travel we’ve seen was when Fuery disappeared for a year on a trip to Xerxes and came back with amnesia, thinking it’d only been a day since he left his house. He probably fell off his camel, the punk.” Ed had a beard, then, and was rubbing it constantly. A nervous tick, perhaps. “Don’t even dream about time travel. Isn’t possible.”

Lan Fan had looked to her Emperor to find him glancing back at her, a question in his eyes. It didn’t matter. Edward Elric had not been able to lie to Lan Fan since the day he trapped her in rope in Rush Valley. His _qi_ was a flightless bird, flapping as it ran as though it might leave the ground. An open book crammed full of emotion. 

The beard certainly hadn’t helped. Lan Fan had sighed and watched as Ed picked at the hair in his mustache. If he was trying not to look like his father, he was doing a dreadful job of it. 

Ling, having thought so too, found reason to point it out. It took many, many pulled strings to keep Ed from being executed for aggravated assault on the Emperor, but. His words, and the idea that Amestris had found the secret to time travel, were not so easily dismissed. 

After the passing of another decade, three things had happened in resounding succession. One sunny day in April, Ling decided he’d had enough of the throne. Ed’s brother returned suddenly in the night before the summer solstice with something terrible in his hands. On the last day of August, Lan Fan made her final sacrifice.

It had been hot in the Commander’s quarters, but Al and Ling sat there the whole evening, staring at her staring at the Stone. After Ling’s father died, it was given to the palace physicians and scientists. Drip by drip, it’d elevated medicine and alkahestry to impossible heights. By the time it had done all it could for Xing, the ruby liquid was two thirds gone. Now, it had found its way back into the palm of Lan Fan’s hand and the only corpse in front of her was her own; who she’d been before she became a monster.

While her fate slipped away from her, Lan Fan had wondered if she could be one third the person Van Hohenheim was.

* * *

“It doesn’t really look all that different.” Ling cocks his head. “Xue Yan must be taking it slow.”

Lan Fan can’t reply like she knows he wants her to, too caught up in the _he’s here, he’s safe, thank God—_ to think of anything else. It figures that Ling wouldn’t be impressed with the fact that he’s jumped a month into the future. This is only his first taste of time travel, and he’s already _bored_.

He looks at Lan Fan, bowing before him, and his eyes find the top of her head. “Lan Fan, you have a silver hair. Is the Stone working?”

She finds her breath. “The Stone is as effective as ever, your Majesty. It’s only stress.”

“Ah,” Ling tuts, his grin not quite masking the worry in his face. “I’m not Emperor anymore, Lan Fan. No more ‘your Majesty’.”

“It is habit. Forgive this one, if this one has not yet adjusted.”

“No more of that, either. I should’ve gotten rid of the practice years ago.” Ling sighs and taps his hand to his mouth. Around them, cars honk angrily, swerving to avoid them, and Lan Fan desperately wants to take Ling’s arm and drag him onto a private roof. The former Emperor is supposed to be in Aerugo, after all. “Addressing me as the Emperor is out of the question, and ‘young lord’ seems too presumptuous for my age.” 

“You are still young, my lord.”

Ling laughs, and Lan Fan tries not to think about how long she has to hear that sound. “Yes, the youngest Emperor to retire willingly _and_ peacefully. Well, and I’m not your lord, either. You’re not in service to the Yao clan anymore, and definitely not to me.” He takes her arms and pulls her up, so that she’s looking into his eyes. “I’m Ling, and you’re Lan Fan. No more titles.”

Quickly, hopelessly, she looks to the designs on his collar, the peacock feathers much simpler than the intricate silk threaded into his old Imperial robes. “You are my master. No matter the official status you may hold, that has never changed.”

Ling sighs, a frustrated huff. “I should’ve known it would take more time. You’ve always been stubborn.”

Lan Fan finds that she can live with being called stubborn, as long as it helps keep Ling Yao alive. The Emperor—because it’s still more familiar to think of him as such—loops his arm through hers before she can stop him, and heads for the side of the road. It’s noon, the sun beating down heavily onto the bleached pavement. Tiles on rooftops gleam painfully in the bright light, and Ling shields his eyes with his sleeve. Street vendors line the sides of the road, the intersections, the thick smell of their goods reaching further than their shouts. Ling pulls Lan Fan over to one of the stations, and she buys him a handful of lamb kebabs and a meat bun for good measure.

“This is the best part,” Ling says, between mouthfuls. “Seeing Xing again from the ground. You never get the whole picture when you’re sitting on that throne. Too much can slip out of your hands, the corners of your eyes.” He offers her a kebab. “Eat, Lan Fan. You’re so thin, and paler than you were before.”

Lan Fan wants to shake her head, but Ling is looking at her with those eyes again, the same ones she’d seen when he mentioned her hair. Sharp and clear as the river current before the drop, and just as dangerous. He need not concern himself with her, she wants to tell him, even as she takes the food. She will protect him just as fiercely as she had before, at whatever cost.

At that thought, a clamor erupts in her mind. Rough voices, cracking and squalling across her thoughts in a torrential wave. It lasts half a second, but Lan Fan’s brow furrows, and she blinks. The Emperor is looking worriedly at her, and he is tinged red. She blinks again.

“What is it, Lan Fan?” Ling grips her hand, and his skin is burning. Or hers is freezing. “This past month, I haven’t been here with you. What happened?”

Lan Fan stares at their hands, his knuckles white with the strain. For a heartbeat, she considers telling him the truth. But she feels it then; his _qi_ a strip of silk around a hot stone, the barest afterimage of his soul. 

She cannot tell him how she had lived the last month without him—the first month without him since Amestris—if she can even call it living. How awful it had been to wake up and reach for his _qi_ and find nothing but her own, an unfamiliar jumble of clashing energy. A moment of debilitating fear, nausea, _anger_ , before she remembers her choice, and his. She cannot describe how humiliating it was to request a new Commander for her Majesty, for the new Empress, because she’d been unable get out of bed most days. The angry voices inside her mind screamed at her, tore at her consciousness until she could see only flashes of green white crimson _neon_ , until Mei had to put her to sleep every night with a firm jab to the back of her neck.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Lan Fan had thought, screamed into the throng. I don’t know how to help you. I’m sorry. When Ling had taken in his Stone, Greed had made the other souls obey, drowned everything else out. Here, there are no sins but her own, and nothing in her head but a devastating chorus of ‘ _murderer, traitor, monster, thief’_ to keep her from her peace. Lan Fan knew Mei would have taken the Stone out of her, would’ve found a way, but she knew Lan Fan. Lan Fan, who wouldn’t take it out, who wouldn’t tell him the truth. Because she has to, _has_ to protect Ling Yao, no matter what.

“The Stone has been as expected. But I’ve recovered.” Ling’s mouth stiffens and he moves to grip her shoulders. Lan Fan stares hard into his eyes, and in the sunlight they look almost tawny. “I remain just as capable as I’ve always been, my lord. You will never be in danger.”

Ling opens his mouth, and she thinks he might yell at her. But then he stops, and straightens, and exhales loudly. This close to him, Lan Fan can hear his heartbeat, thundering through his feet into the ground, and all the things he won’t say. I know that. That’s not what I meant. What are you hiding from me, Lan Fan?

Passerby shoot them strange glances. The sun goes suddenly behind a cloud, and a familiar presence tickles her brain before Lan Fan can identify it. She whips her head to the left and spies a woman’s thin braids swinging out of sight behind a large group.

Ling sees her too, entwining his arm in Lan Fan’s again. “I was wondering when she’d show up. Come on, Mei will have our hides if we stall any longer.”

* * *

“Day drinking? Already?” They’re sitting in the corner of a crowded bar, and Ling whistles as he looks around. “Mei, I’m disappointed.”

“You do know you’re supposed to be in Aerugo, right?” Mei hisses, ignoring him. On the table, Xiao Mei opens one eye to glare. “If just one person on that street had recognized you—and one _would have,_ with all the attention you were getting—you could’ve kissed any hope of time travelling goodbye. God, Ling, what were you thinking?”

Mei Chang has missed her brother. Lan Fan looks around the crowded, smoky room, and wants to take to the roof, to scan the area. Ling doesn’t release his hold on her arm. “Ah, but did they? You should have more faith, Mei, your disguise was foolproof.” He shakes his sleeves, and gestures to his ponytail. “What kind of Emperor would dress like a charlatan?”

“Is it a disguise if I just brought what was inside to the outside?” 

“Dear me, do you kiss Alphonse with that mouth?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Mei lifts her chin, even as her face reddens. “You need to be more careful, especially if you’re going to keep Lan Fan close to you like that. Or have you forgotten how popular _that_ topic of gossip was?”

Lan Fan’s cheeks turn to fire, and when Ling snorts she gives him a furtive look that makes him put his hands up. “Fine, fine, you’re right. You’ve all ganged up on me since I’ve been gone.” He sits back in his chair. “How is my daughter?”

“Xue Yan is fine.” Mei waves her hand. “In fact, I’d say she’s doing better than you did back when you became Emperor.”

“Well, and I certainly didn’t have a loving father to help prepare me.”

“Please. She takes far more after her mother than you.” Mei examines her nails. “Her charm, of course, is my doing, and her strength is all Lan Fan.”

Lan Fan narrows her eyes across the table. Mei doesn’t look up once. “Your son, on the other hand, is a national menace. You know he won’t stop following Al around like a duckling, begging him to teach him alchemy? Then Ed comes to visit, and Xue Kun starts threatening to move to Amestris.”

“Let him,” remarks Ling, grinning. “He’ll be much more at ease there anyway. And he can torment Edward and his children instead of his sister.” 

“I sent Liang to Amestris a week ago, and now he and Ed are thick as thieves.” Mei shakes her head. “Al isn’t worried at all, even though it’s _his son_ over there wreaking havoc _._ ”

Ling chuckles, and begins to say something, but Lan Fan barely hears it. It’s like the engine of a train, the shouting, and the words reverberate painfully in her ears. _‘Thief. Monster. Murderer.’_ Her free left hand grips the side of her chair, and the sound of metal fingers cracking wood shoots lightning up her spine.

Mei glances at her then, and immediately forces Ling up to get some tea. “And make sure they don’t slip some rum in and charge you extra. This place is corrupt.”

Ling grumbles, but he doesn’t hesitate. When he’s gone, Mei gets up and grabs Lan Fan’s face, staring into her eyes. “Don’t suppress them. That never lasts, and they only get angrier.” 

Lan Fan tries to keep her eyes open, but the room is turning black and yellow, and she can’t feel the floor beneath her. She finds Ling’s _qi_ and holds tight. “They’re too loud. I can’t let him know.” 

“Fool. He’s been through it before. You really think you can hide this from him, of all people?” When Lan Fan starts to fall over, Mei holds her steady and looks around. It’s lucky they’re in a room full of drunkards. “The more you’re together with him the more he’ll find out, and you’ll be with him until he leaves again. You can’t push them down for that long without any repercussions, Lan Fan.”

“I can, for a few days.” Lan Fan’s vision comes together like patchwork. “He won’t stay for that long, nothing’s changed since he last saw the city.”

“You would really let him leave so early? You missed him, Lan Fan, you more than all of us.”

“I’m _useless_ right now. I can’t protect him, not until I can deal with them.” Ling’s _qi_ is still bright, and constant across the room. Lan Fan grips Mei’s hand, and the princess stares at her. “Please, Mei. Don’t tell him.” 

Mei still looks like she wants to refuse, but she nods. “Okay. But pull yourself together, Lan Fan, or he’ll find out on his own.” 

The voices are still screaming at her when Ling comes back, but they are a more muted, white noise now. He’s looking at her, but Lan Fan’s face is blank, her apologies a silent litany in her brain. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. 

“So how long do you plan on staying here, Ling?” Mei begins, sipping her tea. “Now that you can successfully travel a month into the future, it’s probably safe enough to try jumping half a year.”

“I’ll probably stick around for a few more days and see Yan and Kun.” Ling swirls his tea in his cup. “Then I’ll jump two years.”

“Two years?” Mei almost squawks, and Lan Fan grips the broken wood of her chair with her flesh hand, splinters digging into the pads of her fingers. Two years without him. “Why two years?”

“A lot can be done in two years,” Ling continues, spreading his hands on the table. “I didn’t modernize Xing. I only started it on that path. It’s not the same as it was twenty years ago, but there’s still a lot of room for change. Two years is a long enough time to see some of it through.”

“It’s not safe.” Lan Fan’s voice is clear, but it catches. “I can’t sense you, when you time travel. No one knows if it works until you show up, and I can’t save you if it fails.”

“It won’t. People have jumped seven years ahead and they made it, safe and sound.”

“You’re not _people_ , my lord.”

“He’ll be fine,” Mei cuts in, pointing at Ling. “If he isn’t, I’ll kill him myself, and don’t think I won’t go into that place in between time to do it, either. But right now, we need to go. A bar isn’t the place to discuss this, and I promised Xue Yan I’d bring you to her when you arrived.”

The cool afternoon air smells of petrichor, but rain hasn’t yet begun to fall from the sunlit cracks in the clouds. Lan Fan half wishes it would, if only so it could wash away the thick, slippery uneasiness coating her silent, crowded head. Two years looms long in front of her, two years of waiting and wondering and watching for him. She supposes it won’t be hard to keep busy; Mei is right, she can’t suppress her souls, not if she wants to keep her sanity, her apologies, intact. She is not the murderer, the thief, the traitor they call for, and yet she tries to keep them down, and silent. How is she different from the dwarf in the flask then?

Days pass. When Ling Yao winks at her, and presses his hand to the machine on his wrist, and is gone, Lan Fan swallows the aching, longing hole he leaves behind and thinks into the mob in her mind: _hello._

* * *

Two-year jumps become five. Ten. Fifty.

Lan Fan no longer works for Ling’s family, hasn’t since that first horrible month that Ling was gone, but his daughter the Empress still feels the need to give her a paycheck every week. For waiting on my ignorant father, she insists, and laughs with Ling’s mouth, and nothing Lan Fan says can persuade her to take the money back. In her mind, she often pictures Xue Yan as she’d been as a child, tugging on Lan Fan’s uniform and begging her for piggyback rides, fresh dumplings, a kunai of her own.

When Xue Kun comes back from Amestris with Ed and Winry in tow, he demands a spar with Lan Fan, and promptly gets knocked into the dirt. Then he demands another round, bringing a clean-shaven Ed in with him, and Ed does not appreciate getting knocked down at all.

“It’s not a fair fight!” He grumbles under his breath, and his wife laughs at him. Silently, Lan Fan agrees, and rubs at the center of her back.

None of the souls had answered her first greeting, or her second, or her third. On her fourth try, Lan Fan thinks she hears a female voice cry back, but the sound is crushed by the wailing. One night, when she’s sitting in the guest room of Mei and Al’s house and trying to think of anything except for how empty the spaces Ling occupied are, she tries again, speaking out loud and directly to the voice she heard before. “Hello.” “What’s your name?” “I’m sorry about what happened to you.” When someone answers, the same female voice from before, the others murmuring in Lan Fan’s brain start to quiet, and her shoulders drop in relief. It’s the first night in a long, long while that Mei doesn’t have to knock her out.

The soul’s name is Cassandra, and she had been twenty when the king of Xerxes had become a puppet for the Homunculus, and she knows Lan Fan is not her murderer. She has a quiet, pleasant voice that grows in pitch when she is nervous, and goes dark and low when they talk about her life in Xerxes. She speaks in Amestrian, like all the souls do, but with an accent that stretches her vowels, and Lan Fan thinks this must be what the original Xerxean language had been before the Homunculus had taken it to the fledgling country in the West. Cassandra remembers that her father had died before the fall, that she had a baby sister, that her friends called her Cass. She gives Lan Fan leave to call her that, too, and if the girl could’ve smiled, Lan Fan thinks she would have, in that moment.

Cass’ friendship can’t hold back the other souls, but it eases the silences after. When Lan Fan asks if there are other souls like Cass, souls who don’t really think Lan Fan killed them, Cass makes a sound of assent. _‘I can ask them, if you want.’_

“Wait. You can talk to them?” 

_‘Sure. It’s harder to drown out the noise when two of us are talking, but we can do it. And thank God, because I’d have been bored to tears in here otherwise.’_

Cass brings Davit, the soul of a middle-aged man with a thin voice that Lan Fan imagines used to wear glasses. He makes a firm, scoffing noise when she tells him that the Homunculus had been destroyed, and scolds Cass when she curses the dead king. Lan Fan wonders at the fact that these two souls are conversing, with each other and with her, in a consciousness that is filled to the brim with thousands of screaming, frantic people.

She asks Mei about it the next morning, and the princess’ eyes grow wide enough that Lan Fan can see clearly the person behind her—Winry—in their reflection. “It isn’t impossible, I suppose, but the souls in Ling’s memory and the researchers’ reports didn’t appear to have any autonomy at all, much less the ability to speak with each other. Hohenheim had talked to his souls, but only individually.” She cut Lan Fan a look, gripping her chopsticks menacingly. “You wouldn’t be interested in giving me a sample, would you?”

Perhaps it is this particular Stone’s potency, which is far less than the one Ling and Hohenheim had taken into their bodies. Perhaps it is the particular souls. But Cass and Davit can talk to each other, and to Lan Fan, with a clarity that Mei had never seen. And in time, more and more souls stop, and listen, and begin to reply. Benjamin had just turned nine. Jada loved baking bread with her husband. Dahlia had been knitting her great-niece a new cloak. Tom never liked the way his hair curled in humidity. Adam could only paint sunsets.

Lan Fan takes their lives, their thoughts, their wishes, and prints them onto her heart, one by one. Then even if they lose themselves and forget, there is still one person who can tell them, and remember.

When Ling arrives from his ten-year jump, she shows him the very first high-rise, designed by his six-year-old grandson, and tells him about a blind Ishvalan woman named Hanna who could draw anything you described to her.

“Do you think she could draw me?” 

Lan Fan smiles down at her hands, metal and bone. “She wants to know how you plan on getting her pen and paper, my lord. Then she’ll think about it.”

He laughs, and the wind scatters leaves into the air. In the cloudless sky, they glow like the lights of a city, like flecks of paint orange and ruby and gold. Lan Fan’s eyes trace Ling’s profile, and tries not to hope that maybe he’ll stay, this time. “Mei tells me you’re an informant,” he says, his voice quiet. “And you’ve been working in nursing homes.”

Lan Fan doesn’t work in the palace. She can’t, when there are too many people still who may remember her as Ling’s Commander. Back then, she and Mei had set up a spy network, and Xue Yan tells her how it’s expanded, giving her a few locations where the informants have disappeared. Lan Fan looks after the ill, elderly patients at nearby sick houses as part of her cover; the men love to admire her arm, and the women crow for more of her stories, and all of them like to ask when Lan Fan will settle down, have children. When she sings them to sleep, they hum quietly along, and Lan Fan thinks about how Fu would always nod along to the beat of her voice. She enjoys her cover job far too much. 

When she tells Ling this, his smile is sad. “They are lucky, then, to hear you sing.” He looks down at her Automail hand and his brow furrows. “Being an informant…is it dangerous?”

“Some, my lord. The larger dissent groups are better trained than common mobs. But I’ve only gotten superficial wounds, and the Stone works well.” 

He nods, and smiles, and says he is relieved. But Lan Fan can feel his _qi_ , the silk flapping and tugging in a fierce wind, trapped under cold rock. She thinks of Gluttony, desperately holding pieces of himself together as she and Ling danced around him. And then of Pride, who’d eaten Gluttony to replenish his own supply of souls.

She wonders if she should tell Ling that she can sense the souls fading, one by one, with each cut or bruise or broken bone, leaking out of her. Souls she hasn’t met yet, and never will. That this time it _is_ because of the lesser potency, Mei had told her, and years of tests and experimentation. That she cannot protect him forever, like they’d so foolishly believed.

Maybe Lan Fan should be grateful. It was never going to be _forever_. Ling was still aging, no matter how far he ran, slowly and softly. His face would be lined, and his hair would be white, and then one day she would be left to watch the changing of the world without him.

But now. Lan Fan looks back at Ling, and he’s frowning up at the sky, the trees, with a dark despairing in his eyes. The half-built skyscrapers reach like gleaming fingers towards the heavens, ivory on blue. Across from them, the palace looms large with arching beams and ceramic tiles and gold knobs set into red wood. If someone were to leap up and nestle into the crevice between the topmost roofs, they might’ve been able to see what is in this courtyard: a man and a woman, who are terrified for each other. 

“All right then.” Ling dusts off his clothes and stands to face her, half his face in shadow. “Let’s go find some pen and paper. I haven’t had my picture drawn in years.”

Lan Fan watches as if through a lens when Hanna controls her body, and Cass makes herself useful by correcting Ling’s _comical_ self-descriptions. _‘Don’t listen to him, Hanna, he has thin eyes.’ ‘Thinner.’ ‘His hair isn’t that long.’ ‘Neither is his nose, it's not a_ banana _.’ ‘He’s got a leaf on his head draw that too.’ ‘It’s on his face now.' ‘The man has shifty eyes, Lan Fan, why can’t he just accept it?’_

When the sketch is done, Hanna gives him the paper and Lan Fan feels herself fall back into her body. Mei finds them, carrying Xue Kun’s newborn daughter, and Ling holds the drawing up to his face. “Quick, Han Jie, look away. Your grandfather’s nose is twice as big now.”

“Perfect size to look down at you from when this is hanging in your living room.”

Mei mimes chucking the infant at him, and Lan Fan chokes on a laugh. In her head, she hears Hanna laughing too.

* * *

By her eightieth birthday—does it matter what age she is, now?—Lan Fan has enough money to buy a comfortable place in the city nearer to Mei, and Al, and Ling’s children. But the capital is loud now, much louder than it had been before the interstate roads had been built, and she chooses a small house on the edge of a newly developed town, close to the train station. Mei’s grandchildren visit often, and they love to splash around in the small pond next to the tree line. Lan Fan teaches them about the Dragon’s Pulse, and they practice reading _qi,_ the velvet, glowing petals of theirs filling her little courtyard.

The boy, Han, asks where her _qi_ is, and Lan Fan struggles to find her words. His sister Huang Qin wags her finger at him. “Remember what Grandfather said? Miss Lan Fan can’t reveal her _qi_ to anyone! She’s on a top-secret mission for Her Majesty!”

Thank God for Alphonse Elric’s lies.

One night, when Lan Fan is helping Mei braid her hair, the children sit down in front of them. “Grandmother, tell us about Ling Yao and the Philosopher’s Stone again!”

Lan Fan stares down at her braid, the strands bright in her metal hand. “It’s past your bedtime,” Mei says, “and you’ve heard that story a dozen times over.”

“Tell us about what happened after, then.” Huang Qin pleads, her eyes wide and sparkling. “You’ve never told us about that.”

Mei falters, and Lan Fan finds she quite enjoys how the children manage their grandmother. She’s hit with a taste of her own medicine. “What’s there to tell? We returned across the desert with the Philosopher’s Stone, and Ling Yao became the crown prince.”

“You said one of his retainers died in Amestris.” Han rocks back and forth in his seat. “Did you bring him back?”

Lan Fan squeezes the hair in her hands. Mei doesn’t notice. “Yes. He was buried on the Yao family estate, with all the honor a loyal guard could receive. His granddaughter was appointed Commander, when Ling became Emperor.” 

“She had an Automail arm with hidden knives and bomb compartments.”

“That wasn’t why he chose her.” Mei smiles. “The Commander grew up with Ling, trained with him since they were five. She understood his goals, his desires, better than anyone, and she cut off her arm to save him because she knew that he could change their country. In that final, terrible battle she stayed with him and protected him, even when her grandfather was dying and Ling’s body wasn’t his anymore. She would do anything for him.” She shakes her head. “Ling knew he would never find anyone more loyal or brave. Anyone he could trust more than her.”

“What about the Empress?” Huang Qin asks. Lan Fan’s fingers are trembling.

“Yeah,” agrees Han, his voice indignant. “Why didn’t he marry his guard? She would’ve been able to protect him all the time, then. Did they not love each other?” 

_‘Well, well,’_ Cass’ voice is almost unbearably loud. _‘That kid’s asking the real questions.’_ Davit shushes her emphatically. 

“Back when our father was Emperor, there was a law. The ruling monarch would have fifty spouses, one from each of the fifty clans. Because of this law, many provinces warred with each other, and some of my brothers and sisters died fighting for the throne. When Ling became Emperor, he got rid of the law and ended the clans’ struggle for power.” Mei sighs. “But in exchange for the abolishment of that law, the government council demanded that Ling marry someone of noble birth. And it was just his luck that a beautiful girl from Xiu _guó_ had just arrived in the capital. She married him, even though she could definitely have done better.”

She could have, Lan Fan thinks shamelessly. Her name had been Bai Lian, and she was trained in martial arts, needlework, international politics. She was beautiful and clever and kind, and she’d liked Lan Fan immediately, in spite of the rumors. And Lan Fan had devoted herself to the Empress—her first female friend—with the same fierce conviction she held for the Emperor. During the birth of the princess, and later the prince, the Empress had insisted that no one but Lan Fan be present, and Lan Fan had stroked her mistress’ hair, and held her hand, and soothed her through the pain. When she was handed the baby to hold, Xue Yan’s mouth so like her father’s, Lan Fan hadn’t been able to stop the tear that slipped down her cheek, splashing onto the princess’ forehead, her heart full of happiness and nerves and something else that was too dangerous to name.

“Then what happened?” wonders Huang Qin, her little face insistent. “The Empress was assassinated?”

Cass swears in her head, and Lan Fan jolts, the movement tugging on Mei’s hair. The woman gives Lan Fan a look. “Yes. There was a civil war in her province, and her entire family was killed. The dissenters got into the palace and killed her before the Commander could kill them.” 

There is blood on Lan Fan’s hands, seeping into the wooden floor. Bai Lian’s head feels heavy in her lap. Then she’s gone, and Lan Fan is holding her children, silent tears dripping down their faces onto the marble floor. Holding Ling, who bawls in her arms, and muffling her own tears into her shoulder. Lan Fan ties off Mei’s hair and stands up, turning towards the doorway.

“What happened to the Emperor, the Commander?” Huang Qin’s little voice is wobbly. “Mother said there are no records of them after that.”

“No one knows. Her Majesty was old enough to rule, and Ling believed she would surpass him as Empress, so he gave her the throne and left. Some people think he went to Aerugo, or back to Amestris. Others think they died of heartbreak.” Mei scoffs. “Like it’d be that easy to off them.”

“Maybe they fell in love, and left to be together.” Han pipes up. “They should have a happy ending, after all that.”

“Yes,” says Mei, forcefully. Lan Fan can feel her eyes on her as she leaves the room, two knifepoints in her back. “They should.”

When she finds Mei again, the woman is sitting at Lan Fan’s little tea table, her braided hair roped over her shoulder. Lan Fan thinks Cass and Davit are calling her name, but she ignores them. Anger sparks white dots in the corner of her vision. “Is this what you’ve been telling them?” she spits out. “That I’m some sort of romantic martyr, and that he didn’t have a choice?”

Mei looks at her and sips her tea. “You’re too loud. Come outside with me, and bring a lantern. You need a haircut.”

The air is humid, muggy. In the direction of the pond, a frog croaks, and the fireflies hover in thick, glowing swarms. When Lan Fan looks up, the stars spin in and out of the clouds, and something traces pearly circles across her skin that burn with a strange fire. The city is too noisy and too empty and too much, but here. Here is where she touches earth and sky at once, all the universe in her palm.

Mei meets her, brandishing a pair of scissors and sitting Lan Fan down. “It’s not a lie. You _are_ a martyr, and so is he.” She starts to cut right at Lan Fan’s jawline. “Don’t think Bai Lian didn’t know exactly what she was getting into when Ling married her.”

“He married her because he _loved_ her. Anything else is hearsay.”

“Of course he loved her! But you’re an idiot if you think that he only kept you near him for his own protection.” Mei’s scissors scrape the back of her neck. “Ling couldn’t have gone toe-to-toe with Greed for so long if he wasn’t just as selfish, just as _possessive_. His love for Bai Lian was real, and truer than an ingot. But it also forced him to better understand the other wishes of his heart.” 

A sudden, cold breeze brushes across Lan Fan’s exposed neck. “Bai Lian didn’t know. She would never have agreed.”

“Bai Lian loved him, loved you. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t excuse, if it was you two.” Mei points the scissors at her. “You should know. You stayed by his side, and protected him, and watched him spend his life with someone else. And taking in that wretched Stone?” She grips Lan Fan’s cold hands in hers. “Is there nothing you won’t do for him?”

Lan Fan wants to argue. She does. But the weight of her hair is gone, is replaced by a leaden _anchor_ pressing on her chest. Suddenly it is all _too much_. Mei is looking at her, and Lan Fan can’t remember when her face had grown so weathered, her hair silver as an ancient blade. Her grandchildren sleep in the house behind them, Mei’s grandchildren, who can never tap into the Dragon’s Pulse to find her _qi_ , because Lan Fan’s head isn’t her own anymore. Her grandfather had almost retched when he first felt that twisted mass of energy beneath Amestris. Had been disgusted.

Fu had trusted Lan Fan to protect Ling. Lan Fan the warrior, who cut off her own arm. But Fu is gone, _Ling_ is gone, and who is she now? Lan Fan the heartsick fool. Lan Fan the _beast_. What has she _done_? The sky is clearing, the stars are falling, her souls are stirring. Mei is holding her hands, and Lan Fan is gasping through her tears as she searches, the remnant of her _qi_ bleeding into the night for the quiet, beautiful impression of silk and stone.

Tonight, she feels Ling’s absence like a tear in her lungs. “Nothing.”

Mei wipes Lan Fan’s face with her hands. Mei Chang, who will never see her brother again. “You don’t have to believe that he loved you, before the Stone and Amestris and Bai Lian. But after that, all Ling had ever wanted was to free you. From us, from your duty. From him.” Mei looks at her, and Lan Fan sees her own eyes fill with tears. The Ouroboros on her back throbs. “I know this will always be your choice. But believe this. You can always be more, with or without him. You deserve to be.”

This time, when the souls start to cry out, Lan Fan cries with them.

* * *

They all leave gradually; Alphonse, Mei, Xue Yan. Edward and Winry and Xue Kun. In her house at the edge of the earth, Lan Fan holds Han’s old, wrinkled hand and thinks about that night when her fearful heart had burst, shattered beneath the prism sky.

But she doesn’t have the time to be so afraid, now. As good as being a nurse, being a _spy_ is, Lan Fan is quick to find out that she can’t keep it up for so long. Years after Xue Yan’s grandchildren's reigns end, more and more people begin wondering about her: why she doesn’t age, why she still looks thirty when she should be ninety—and by then she really should be five hundred ninety.

When the days without Ling turn into centuries, Lan Fan finds a job as a martial arts teacher. A position opens in a school in Hua _guó_ , close to the province’s central city. It’s a good offer, with decent pay and no questions asked about who she is or where she came from. As long as Lan Fan does her part, the gruff old director had said in a voice that reminded her too much of Fu’s. As long as the children were safe and happy. 

Lan Fan thinks that the first half is easy; her abilities are as strong as ever, even if she doesn’t have use for them now. The children, however. 

Lan Fan likes children. After all, she had taught Xue Yan and Xue Kun, and she’s still around enough of Mei and Al’s descendants to say she enjoys their company, but those kids had lived their whole lives with her. These students, staring up at her now with some wonder and a little boredom—she doesn’t quite know what to do with them.

 _‘Relax,’_ Maria, a young mother, whispers in her brain. _‘You’re a teacher to them, and that’s all they expect to get from you. But teaching isn’t the only thing you can do.’_

Have fun with them, Maria means. But Lan Fan doesn’t know how she can do both. Her grandfather had all but discouraged the sentiment during her training, and she had not picked up enough of Ling’s charming amusement in their youth to replicate it. She stares back at the students, _her_ students, and her mind is blank.

“Hey, miss.” A voice in the back, from one of the boys. He has a crooked grin, and a tooth is missing from his top row. “What happened to your arm?”

Lan Fan blinks. “I cut it off.”

Before she can reprimand herself because what are you _thinking_ , Lan Fan, they’re _children_ , they shouldn’t be hearing such things, the students’ jaws go slack. One girl raises her hand and asks why Lan Fan cut it off. “Was it diseased?”

“No.” Lan Fan fiddles with her sleeve. “Something had injured it, before. It couldn’t be saved.” 

“Who was it?” asks the same boy, sitting on his knees as though he is afraid she won’t see him. “A thief? An assassin? 

“A monster?” It’s a quiet guess, from a girl right at the front who looks away from Lan Fan as soon as she turns to her. There is a stabbing sensation in the center of her back.

“It can’t be. _Yāoguài_ never actually touch you!” 

“They can! My uncle got scratched by one once. It left three claw marks in his thigh!”

“Was it a monster, miss?” The boy in the back asks, louder than the other children. “Or was it a man?”

Yes, Lan Fan could say. He was a monster, something unnatural born from greed and selfish ambition. She’d reached into the Dragon’s Pulse, and felt the tangle of distorted, roiling energy so different from human _qi_ emanating from the fat one, from Gluttony, and knew he was something other. But the Führer had _qi_. No one, not even Fu, had guessed he was anything more than human until he’d uncovered his eye to reveal the Ouroboros, blazing red on white. There was no distortion, no writhing mass in his soul to mark him as any more a monster than the rest of them. He had been a monster with one soul; was he not then also a man? When had the line between the two begun to dissolve?

Bradley had been a human before the Stone, as she had been. And yet. Lan Fan can still feel a flicker of her own _qi,_ nearly hidden in the heavy, unfamiliar mass of the souls in the Stone. She closes her eyes. Lan Fan the beast. A blind man reading the Pulse would think her more a monster than Bradley. Bradley, who had severed the tendon in her arm before she could move. Bradley, who had survived dismemberment to taunt her. Bradley, who had not been _not_ human.

She is worse than him, now. Her arms can grow back.

“Miss?” Lan Fan’s eyes open. The boy’s grin is gone, and his little face anxious. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“He was both,” she says, and surprises herself. “Human and monster. He was both.”

The boy nods sagely. “Humans can be monsters, too.”

“What’s your name, miss?” wonders the quiet girl, looking up at Lan Fan with curious, shining eyes.

Lan Fan means to use the false name Mei had given her ages ago, or one of them, but right now she feels as though all her bones are rattling. “Lan Fan.” 

The girl nods. “I’m Hua Yin.”

Next to her, Hua Yin’s friend pipes up. “I’m Lin Yü.”

“Yi Ren.”

“Jin.”

“Bai Yang.”

One by one, the students state their names, their voices clear in the quiet room. Through the windows, Lan Fan hears sparrow calls in the tree branches, and an errant breeze brushes her hair against her jaw. She imagines her grandfather’s courtyard in the Yao estate, ringed with persimmon and willow trees, leaves dusting the stone tile, and thinks it’s not much different here. In this bright, gentle space, where the air is stained rosy and sounds ring like tinkling bells, there’s a soft uncoiling feeling in the cavity of her chest.

“I’m Hu”, chimes the boy in the back, smiling toothily. Lan Fan smiles back, and thinks of another boy who'd grinned at her like that, and wonders at the notion that maybe this is what it means to be more. Her Ouroboros still tickles, and the voices in her head have gone silent, but Lan Fan feels the sympathetic touch of one of them on her own soul. The first beat of a song.

Can a monster be human?

* * *

One time, she and Ling head to Amestris.

“Amazing.” Ling marvels at the silent, sleek train as it flies over the sand, crossing the stretch of desert like a silver ghost. Across from him, Lan Fan smiles. “I can’t even hear an engine.”

“It runs on hydropower. There’s water below us that’s churning at 800 kilometers per hour.”

“Inside the train? That could tear it apart.”

“Not if you use gravity locks. They push the weight of the water back against it." 

“Remarkable!” Ling rests his cheek into his palm, grinning at her, and Lan Fan looks out the window. At their speed, the orange and gray and pink of dusk blurs together. The sinking sun paints a burnished bronze stripe on the horizon, until the dunes seem to fade into the sky, and the color is almost the same shade as Ling’s clothes. 

The Emperor stares at her, and Lan Fan turns to meet his gaze. A golden boy in a golden world.

“How’s Cass?”

 _‘Shifty-eyes really does care, huh.’_

“She says hello.” Lan Fan replies. “Still can’t mind her own business.”

' _Like I could even if I wanted to. We share the same body.’_ Cass’ tone is all grin. _‘Your life is just so interesting.’_

Shaking her head, Lan Fan taps the side of her armrest, and a screen slides out. “We’ll reach Xerxes in fifteen minutes.” 

Ling gapes at her. “You’re joking. We just left.”

She swings the screen towards him. “The distance is shorter than when we travelled across, my lord. The station behind us didn’t exist twenty years ago.”

“We’re not even halfway. It can’t take fifteen minutes.”

They reach New Xerxes in ten. _‘I don’t know why he looks so put out,’_ says Cass, trying not to laugh. _‘He wasn’t wrong.’_

Lan Fan bites her lip, and grabs Ling’s sleeve. “Come on. We only have half an hour before the train leaves again.” 

New Xerxes is about the size of Xing’s largest city, but it’s glorious. The buildings have stuck to the same general design as the ruins, stone pillars glittering alabaster in the sun. No surface is bare; Cretan native artwork winds down every street, the rooftops littered with Aerugan symbols. Lan Fan hears Drachman folksongs pouring out of a stone pavilion, and Ling whoops gleefully when he sees the dragon of Xing etched into the side of a high-rise.

The broken transmutation mural is untouched, the dark lines faded almost to nothing. When Ling brings them closer to it, something digs a dull blade into Lan Fan’s sternum, and she doubles over with a gasp. The souls clamor inside of her, and she blinks rapidly, her vision cloudy. 

Ling cradles her face in his hands. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“They can’t be here,” Lan Fan says, and he wraps his arms around her. “Cass says it’s too close for them.” 

“All right.” They walk away, and Lan Fan’s head stops pounding. “We should head back anyway, or the train will leave without us.”

She nods. Ling grips her hand, and she can feel his pulse quivering, a wild bird beneath his skin. Lan Fan knows her hand must be too warm, too sticky, but he doesn’t let go, his fingers looping between hers. She thinks Cass might be snickering.

Then she sees the statue, and Ling almost trips over her foot. It’s Ed’s last gift to the city; his image trapped in forty meters of solid tungsten alloy. The Fullmetal Alchemist living up to his name. 

Cass stutters. _‘What. Is that?’_

Lan Fan wants to burrow into the ground and die. “A mistake.” 

“Huh.” Ling puts his free hand on his hip. “You know, I thought it’d be taller.”

Edward Elric stares angrily into the distance, and Lan Fan fights the urge to snap off that strand of hair on his head, sharp as an antenna. 

“It’s missing something, though,” says Ling, and when no one is looking, pulls a pen out of his pocket.

Later, they get a camera from a vendor and Lan Fan takes a picture of him, perched on Ed’s arm and blowing kisses to the scrawled black beard on the giant, chrome face. Then she is running, because people are starting to point, and the train is leaving _right now_ , and Ling has grabbed her hand again, tugging her along and howling with laughter.

When they get to Resembool, Lan Fan buys a sheep hologram for her class, and Ling tucks the photo under Ed’s gravestone.

* * *

Before Ling’s grandson was born, Lan Fan had met 350,000 souls in her body.

Most of them had been Xerxean, or Ishvalan. The architect Joseph lived in a village in Creta, close to the border, and there was a whole family in Lan Fan’s head from the Drachman slopes near Mount Briggs.

But it hadn’t mattered where they were from, in the end. Lan Fan pricked her finger on her knife one day, a drop of blood welling in between the soft lines, and fifteen souls had disappeared. A hundred, when a thief had nailed her in the face with a fist full of large, silver rings.

She'd established a headcount system. Each family or group would tell her if they were all there, if anyone was missing. Sometimes, too often, an entire section would be lost.

Lan Fan tries to be careful, now. She never lets the enemy get closer than the end of her Automail blade, and relies more on her bombs. They don’t touch her, most of the time, and the voices dwindle still. Then Lan Fan sees the turn of a century, the end of the lifetime she shouldn’t have lived. Anna. Pedro. Gunther. Hanna, the Ishvalan artist. There are empty patches in Lan Fan’s twisted, tired soul, and guilt scratches at her throat with a blistering metal hand.

On Sunday, a fifteen-year-old Hu comes into her empty classroom, talking about his newborn nephew with peculiar, beautiful yellow eyes. Lan Fan nods, and smiles, and wonders if Hu knows his sister-in-law carries Xerxes in her blood, but then the window shatters and a man rolls in. And he has a gun.

Hu turns to look, but Lan Fan is already in front of him, shoving him behind a hologram platform. The man’s eyes find hers, pupils wide and blazing, and his _qi_ is a wildfire rippling across a meadow. He’s not terrified of Lan Fan in particular, but his shaking hand pulls the trigger anyway.

She drops to the floor, and the bullet whistles over her head. But the man’s stare jerks upwards, and Lan Fan hears the vibrations of Hu’s steps in the wooden floor. He’d wanted to get behind the man, she thinks, knock his feet out from under him while he was distracted.

Too late. Lan Fan hurls herself up and forward, gets in front of Hu. The man shoots her in the back. 

In the dusky mirror-world of her consciousness, she sees it; the metal pushes its way out in between her ribs, her blood spinning in red arcs off the gleaming surface that grows larger in the reflection of Hu’s panicked stare. The stone that hits the second bird. 

When the gunshot ricochets in her ears, Lan Fan grips his shoulder and shoves him hard, pushing him down onto the floor. Better a bruise than a bullet.

She struggles to catch her breath as Hu gets up, knocks the man unconscious, takes his gun. Pressing a hand to her ribcage, Lan Fan closes her eyes and concentrates. Deep in her veins, her souls wink out like stars in the daylight.

“Miss Lan Fan, open your eyes!” Hu’s hands tug her to her feet, and he curses. “You need medical attention!”

“No.” She puts her hand on his, and Hu falters. “Go to the headmaster and tell him there’s an intruder. He likely knows about the gang fight outside, he’ll send you to a safe place with the other students.”

“I’m not leaving you here like this!” Lan Fan looks at him and blinks out a tear. Hu’s face grows even more distraught. “You’re in pain, and you need help!” 

Yes, she is in pain. Lan Fan pushes Hu away, and he leaves only after she tells him she’ll go to a hospital right away. He’s so tall now, she thinks absently as he sprints off, and growing taller. Lan Fan will likely never see him again.

She stands in the empty, sunlit room, with her bloody hands and bloody clothes. The bullet hole is a faint scratch beneath her fingertips, and there’s a terrible, keening white noise in her head. I’m sorry. You saved me. I couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry. 

A thousand and one, she finds out later. A thousand and one souls left in her head. Cass and Davit are ominously silent, and in the Dragon’s Pulse, Lan Fan finds her _qi,_ a garish beacon in the mist. There are too many to name. Joseph the architect. Nine-year-old Benjamin. Maria, who never found her daughter.

Something very nearly resentment boils behind her eyes, and Lan Fan runs, out of that bright room, out of that school, out into the chalk-white streets. She wants to scream, to hurl something. To peel apart the skin muscle tendon _bones_ of that Xerxes king, the Homunculi, those Amestrian scientists, draw out every agonizing moment. She wants to take that wretched machine off of Ling’s arm and smash it into the ground.

Who will be left, when her lord finally decides that he is done running? Cass? Davit? Will Ling come back to find her grave waiting for him instead?

' _Lan Fan.’_ Cass is a trickle of water in her mind. _‘Lan Fan, it’s not your fault. You’re not a monster._ ’

“I’ve used you terribly. All of you.”

 _‘So many of us were destroyed in tests and medicines, dashed to slivers.’_ Davit’s voice wobbles. _‘We would’ve stayed in that vial forever if you hadn’t taken us in.’_

“I’m sending you to _die_.” 

_‘We’re already dead,’_ says Cass. _‘You’re setting us free.’_

Lan Fan wipes at her face with her sleeve, her shame like coal in her stomach. “Yes, well. I will. I promise. But I can’t die, not yet.”

_‘We know. Your prince needs you.’_

“I need him." Lan Fan says, because this is the truth, the cornerstone of her heart. Lan Fan needs Ling Yao like the earth needs water, like birdsong in the spring. When a cruel, wicked thing had hounded them through the streets of a defiled city,she had cut off her arm rather than let him go _._ Her Ling, who would have run better without her.

Davit's hum is dubious. _'Well, and if you do, does he not need you in the same way?'_

"He didn’t ask me to wait for him.”

 _‘He didn’t_ want _to ask. H_ _ow could he? Who wouldn’t be miserable, spending an eternity this way?’_

An eternity. Lan Fan’s thoughts turn. It hasn't felt like one. There is a large, white room in her memory. Huang Qin and Han dance around her. Covered in dirt, Xue Kun assumes a fighting stance. Hanna draws a banana nose. Mei cradles a baby. In the corner, Xue Yan’s son sketches a skyscraper. An old woman hums along to a song. Hu raises his hand. Ling takes hers to pull her in, and she _feels_ his laughter spreading, like a hot drink on a snowy day. 

She hadn’t been miserable.

If Cass could roll her eyes, she would have been. _‘You and him are so…_ ugh. _It’s maddening! The two of you leap through hoops to be so unhappy for each other, and for what? The idea that maybe you can find your peace, somewhere down the line?’_ She sighs. _‘Do you think he would’ve been able to travel so far if you weren’t with him? Do you really still believe you’re only here to protect him?’_

Mei squeezes her hands under a weeping sky. Crimson and gold flies into view, and Lan Fan stops running, stops walking. She is standing in front of the palace doors, and her heart is bleeding, fracturing in her hands again. When she blinks, her souls reach for her, pulling and pulling until she falls. Right back to the beginning.

* * *

“I don’t know what Ed told you about time travel,” starts Alphonse, his face ashen. Alphonse, who has returned to Xing two days early. “If he told you anything.”

“Nothing of much interest,” Ling lies through his teeth. “Only that it was impossible.”

The lone candle in the small audience room glint off glass, jewels, polished limestone. Lan Fan can just barely glimpse the look on Al’s face, worn and wary. “It’s possible. And it’s tearing Amestris apart.”

Al reaches into his pocket and pulls out a large, metal bracelet. Buttons and dials span the silver surface, converging around a digital screen right at the center that shows a ticking clock. “This is what Amestris has been working on for the last twenty years. A portable mechanism that compresses you through the space-time vortex to a certain point anytime, anywhere in the future.

It’s yours, your Highness, to do with as you wish."

Ling raises a brow. "And what reason does Führer Mustang have for giving such a gift to me, rather than the new Empress?"

“A diplomatic one.” Al’s eyes are sad. “And because your Highness is an old friend who remembers Amestris, and thus may better understand what follows. Right now, the designs for this machine are confidential, held only by the government scientists. The jurisdiction that having this technology gives the government—the Führer—then is…is undefinable.” He looks down at the machine. “A lot of people remember too, you know. What Amestris was, before the Promised Day. A fiscal-military state built on the lies of a leader with too much power. People were dying left and right in wars that fought for nothing. My country is _scared_.”

When Al looks back up at them, his yellow eyes _burn_. “But you knew all that, didn’t you.”

Ling shrugs. “Perhaps. But if I did, rest assured it was not from your brother.”

Al nods. “Right, but. If you know, then our neighbors do too. And they would definitely want this machine, now that they know we have it.” He clenches his hands. “Mustang, Ed, me. We all agreed, no more war. Humans have suffered enough as it is. That’s why I’m here.” He holds the machine out to Lan Fan, and she takes it. The metal is cold in her hand. “There will be war, if we keep our secret. But there may not be if we don’t make it one.”

Ling turns to her, and asks, “Commander. What are you thinking?”

Lan Fan clears her throat. “This machine. What can you do with it?” 

“You can go forward in time, as far forward as you’d like, after you’ve set the exact date and time.” Alphonse points to the screen. “See those letters? Those are coordinates. If you change those, you can also change where you re-materialize.” He looks at Ling. “But you should know. Once you’ve arrived wherever and whenever you entered, there’s no going back. The machine can’t bring you back to the past.”

Good, Lan Fan thinks savagely. It is abominable, this thing they’ve created, a freak of technology with too much license and little limitation. But she looks at Ling, and sees the greed written into the shadows of his face, and dread settles like a cold rock at the bottom of the sea.

In the end, it takes two months. Two months for Ling to groom Xue Yan and set his affairs in order. Two months for him to learn how to use the machine, with all of its colored knobs. 

Two months for Lan Fan to get the Stone, despite all of Al’s disapproval, and Mei’s threats, and her Emperor’s bleak, hopeless silences. Because she has to protect Ling Yao, no matter what he could’ve said.

His sister happily makes up for Ling’s reticence. “You’re insane.”

“Believe what you want. I’m still doing this.”

“Oh, I know. And you’re stubborn enough to survive it, or my brother wouldn’t be sitting outside with his face in his hands and doing absolutely _nothing_ to stop you.” She yanks on the strap around Lan Fan’s middle tighter, her face the picture of fury. “After all the _everything_ that happened in Amestris, and immortality is still so _damn_ important.”

Lan Fan stares up at a spot on the ceiling, and wonders if her grandfather can see her. A man in white comes up on her right, a cherry needle in his hands. She hopes not.

Mei curses again. “You can still back out. This doesn’t have to be your choice.”

Lan Fan doesn't look in her eyes full of fury, doesn't blink.

“Fine, do it. But I can’t be here for this.” Then Mei is gone, and Lan Fan breathes, her eyes fixed on that spot. Grandfather, she thinks, and the spot is blurry. I’m sorry. 

There is a pinch, and then the room turns into red and _pain_. There’s never been anything else but the sensation that her cells are on fire. She tastes iron, then she can’t taste. Her muscles are tearing, snapping. Someone is screaming. A spot in the center of her back turns cold, then unbearably hot. All the bones in her body feel like they are growing out of her skin and lodging themselves back in her head. Lan Fan wants to pass out, but there is nothing to pass into, and she can’t think, and she _is_ nothing.

Then. Through the inferno, she feels an arm. Her left one, missing and now found, tickling with the sensation of being flogged by a dull meat grinder. No, whatever tiny part of her brain that’s still coherent _shrieks_. Not her arm, not her arm. Then the feeling is gone, and her arm is gone, and Lan Fan’s mind is ripping itself apart—

The cold surface of the table sticks to her cheek, and Lan Fan turns her sweaty, weary head. Her clothes are bloody, torn, and there is a swollen, winged snake swallowing its tail on her back. The side of her body twitches, and she half-expects to see her arm, pale and soft as a fresh flower, and the surface of the table glints coldly back at her.

In the end, she thinks, there is still something left of her that matters.

* * *

Ling’s absences are shorter now, she realizes. Before, when he knew he could travel longer and longer without any repercussions, Ling had started to slow down, to stay. He’d spend two months at the palace with his grandkids, and six at her house in the outskirts. They had stayed in Amestris for three years, and then he left for three hundred. 

Lan Fan should be relieved when he stops jumping eight centuries into the future. He is tired of running, she should think, there’s nothing more he wants to see. But Ling is still dazed, still excited about the thin, silver phones you can fold up, _and wear in your hair, Lan Fan, and on your finger!_ He still gazes into the heart of the world and sees what could be.

Ling had always smiled when he first saw her, fresh out of the jump and touching her shoulders, her hair. Now it is the only time he does.

“What’s wrong?” She wonders over and over again. “What’s troubling you?”

He doesn’t look at her when he takes her hands and holds them against his sternum, shaking his head.

 _‘My neighbor Henry used to work in a field,’_ started Davit one day, abruptly. _‘He’d work all day and late into the evening. Sometimes he wouldn’t be home until early the next morning. His wife would wait for him, sewing in front of a single candle in the dark.’_

 _‘Cute,’_ Cass had cut in. _‘Get to the point.’_

 _‘If she fell asleep, the slipping needle would prick her finger until she woke up, and if the candle melted, she’d light a fresh one.’_ He’d taken a breath. ‘ _Henry always used to tell us how she looked at him, smiled at him, when he finally made it home.’_

_‘Like he’s the sun?’_

_‘What? No. You_ squint _at the sun, why would anyone—'_ Davit huffed. _‘Stop interrupting!’_

_‘Well, tell a shorter story! I’ve aged five years listening to that hammy narration—’_

_‘We don’t age, and the fact that you’d even joke about that—’_

Cass and Davit squabbled, and Lan Fan hadn’t told them that she had known why Ling no longer smiled, that she asked and asked and _asked_ only because she needed to hear it from him. Not Mei. Not Cass.

The latter crowed in her head. _‘How many times did your bloody neighbor tell you that story? Why?’_

Lan Fan had pictured Ling’s face in her mind and thought of a few reasons.

But three-hundred-year jumps become fifty. Fifteen. Five. When Lan Fan waits for Ling in the city that shines, it’s only been two months since he left her.

_‘Did he really switch the time to 7 in the morning? I was just kidding!’_

Something twitches in the Pulse, and Lan Fan closes her eyes, diving deep. _Qi_ glows against the back of her eyelids like a stream of fireflies. _‘There he is,’_ Davit mutters, and she finds him; the silken stone feel of him flickering wildly. 

She looks towards the magenta skyline. “He’s downtown.”

 _‘Figures. We told him seven times, and he_ still _got the location wrong.’_

She begins to run, her feet pushing into the concrete. The dying daylight flashes off a million building screens, across her eyes until her lashes sparkle gold. Evening closes above her head in tones of pink and mauve and lapis lazuli, but Lan Fan is hurtling through time and space, twisting her way through the crowd to find the man whose smile makes her want to be _more_. 

Ling is craning his neck in the shadow of an old orchid, but the city seems so, so dim compared to the moment he sees her. Lan Fan, waiting for him after all.

Decorum washes away like dirt from glass, and he pulls her into him, buries his face in her neck. “ _You’re here you’re here you’re here._ Oh, God. Lan Fan.”

There is something wet on her shoulder. There is something wet on her face. “Of course. I’ve been waiting.” 

Ling muffles a sob, and when Lan Fan touches him she holds all the interminable universe in her arms.

Cass is smiling. _‘Maddening.’_ Davit shushes her.

“That’s right.” Ling’s voice is muffled. “I got the location wrong. I’m so sorry, Lan Fan.”

She takes a deep breath, and thinks her heart is bursting again. “You masked your _qi,_ too, you know. Do you know how worried I was?”

“I was trying to surprise you. When you weren’t here, I couldn’t think.” He lifts his head and gazes at her with glassy eyes. “I don’t suppose you would understand.”

“I’ve only lived without you for the last hundred thousand years.” Lan Fan grins when he laughs. “Try me.”

Ling smiles at her then, and it is so, so sad. “I’ve been a fool, Lan Fan.” 

“You have.” She takes his hands, grips them between her own. “I’m immortal. I’m not going anywhere, and you? It would only be a moment for you. One fragment of a second, and you’d find me again.” Lan Fan stares and stares and stares at him. “Ling. You’ve jumped half an age already. What does it matter how far you go from here?”

Ling opens his mouth, closes it, looks at her. Say it, she thinks, her hope beating its fists against her breast. Don’t hide from me. Look into my heart and tell me what could be.

“I’m scared if I go too far, I’ll find a day,” Ling whispers. “A day when you can no longer wait for me.”

“There won't be. Didn’t you say yourself that I was stubborn?”

“Don’t lie. Cass. Davit. Is there anyone else left?" His fingers find her wrist, her pulse. "How much did they torment you, in the time I spent running? How many souls do you lose, every second it takes for me to stop?”

Mei Chang, Lan Fan decides, takes nothing to the grave. Ling holds her Automail arm in his hands. “Before all of this, I was trying to be noble, and let you go. Let you live your life out of the dark, dismal shadow of mine.” He chuckles, a bitter sound. “Now look. You ended up living longer than anyone should.”

“I took the Stone to protect you.” Lan Fan sighs. “But you never needed protecting.” She lifts the hand in his grasp, silver in the unfurling starlight. “I should've known. You’re Ling Yao. You run better without me.”

“That’s not true.” Ling lifts her hand, presses it to his mouth. The wind brushes against the shell of her ear, whispering a song. She is touching earth and sky, all at once. “I’ve only ever been running to you.”

Her. Who is she, now? Lan Fan the warrior. Lan Fan the beast. Lan Fan the woman, who knows her heart, who loves this man in front of her with every tendril of her matted, mottled soul. Hope is a sparrow soaring in her chest. “Are you, still?” 

“No. You’re right here, aren’t you?” Ling laughs into the plating of her palm, and she can _feel_ it. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

Lan Fan rests her forehead against his and thinks this is the day she becomes human.

In the brightest part of her heart, Cass whistles at them.

**~fin~**

**Author's Note:**

> The Doom Days album is Ling and Lan Fan's entire relationship. Change my mind (you can't).  
> Lan Fan is, I think, constantly sensing and feeling and processing, but she bottles so much of it all up inside of her for the sake of the people she cares about that when it rains, it pours.  
> In the situation this story puts her in, after so many years have passed and the lines of place and duty have started to blur, I think Lan Fan finally starts to express her feelings; to be upset and tired and heartsick and carefree and in love, without shame. In my mind, despite all the more selfish reasons, that's what Ling hoped she could be. Lan Fan the human, after all.
> 
> Also, I fully maintain that I will always put Way Too Much into every piece I write, especially when it comes to disentangling a certain bodyguard's feelings. In this case, however, I think all of Lan Fan's emotions are warranted.
> 
> Also on FFNet (at ambiguousArchetype)
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Seriously though. Let Lan Fan have a Good Long Cry 2019.)


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